a short one: they must make hay while the sun shines." To this he replied, "Certainly." Nothing important occurred beyond what I have mentioned. I hope to inherit my Aunt Edwards's Navy Fives, but not her hostility to every-day people. They are a race for whom I have an esteem. Sterne loved a jackass, and Talleyrand's wife took Volney for Robinson Crusoe. "All nature's difference makes all Nature's peace:" and, as I look upon myself as something out of the common way, I hope that I may stand excused for rather liking every-day people.

Hardly was I well settled in my chambers in Furnival's Inn, when I received a card from Mr. and Mrs. Cookson, requesting the honour of my company at dinner on the Friday following. The printer having intimated in a neat Italian hand, at the bottom corner on the right, that the favour of an early answer was desired, I lost no time in acquainting Mr. and Mrs. Cookson that I would do myself the honour of accepting their invitation. This affair of honour being thus settled, I waited in tolerable tranquillity the arrival of the day that was to usher me into Gowerstreet. It might be that my Aunt Edwards had put it into my head, but certain it is, that, on driving up to the place of invitation, it struck me that Gower-street had an every-day look. The footman, who opened the door was arrayed in drab, faced with green; and on my commencing the ascent of the staircase, he offered to take my hat. None but the footmen of every-day people offer to take a visitor's hat as he ascends the stairs. They may be right in the abstract. A "greasy old tatter" of felt may be no pretty appendage to a drawingroom, but I must be allowed to observe that when a servant thus attempts prematurely to purloin one's hat, one sets the family down for every-day people. As my hat happened to be a new one, I determined to get the credit of it: so, rejecting the importunities of the domestic, I carried it upstairs in my hand. Old Mr. Cookson, on my entrance to the drawing-room, offered to shake hands with me, but I was much too polite to do that: I treated his overture with disdain, until I had advanced up to the fire-place to make a bow to Mrs. Cookson, who sat upon the sofa with a fat middle-aged woman in pink crape. Of the two daughters, Lucy and Amelia, the latter was employed in looking over her own scrap-book, and the former, in folding up slips of paper, and giving them a spiral twist towards the base, without which, I presume, they could not fulfil their office of lighting wax-tapers.

The knocker now began to do its duty. Mr. and Mrs. Sparkes were introduced, arm-in-arm. The attitude was new last year, but it is now becoming an every-day one. Mr. and Mrs, and the two Miss. Oliphants came next; the girls shook hands with the Miss Cooksons in great apparent glee, and immediately ran with them into the adjoining drawing room, to canvass matters unfit for the public ear. Mrs. Oliphant wore a red shawl, and Mr. Oliphant limped a little-I fear he is subject to the gout. We had likewise Sir John and Lady Dawson, recently from Paris, and a young man in blue from Basingstoke. Mr. Charles Cookson, though at home, was the last person who entered the room. The consequence was, he had to shake hands with every body in the lump: a ceremony which brought the colour into his cheeks. While standing at the window, the master of the mansion told me, that he remembered when Baltimore-house stood in the fields, and

that duels used to be fought behind the mansion now appropriated to the British Museum. He also recollected Bedford-house, with the two sphinxes at either end of its front wall: indeed he ventured to predict, that upon the falling in of the present leases, the Bedford property would be considerably improved. I, on the other hand, was not idle: I said that there was quite a new town in the neighbourhood of the Regent's Park : that Gower-street would be more gay when it should become a thoroughfare and that the present was a very backward Spring. I believe too I observed, that, a twelvemonth ago, nobody could have predicted that the three per cents. would have reached ninety-seven-but of this I am not certain. Turning round towards the company, I now encountered little Crosby Cookson, (christened with a sirname after his maternal Uncle,) by no means an every-day child: quite the contrary, educated at home, and attended by the very first masters. I love to talk to homeeducated children: they are the only wise people we have left. Our dialogue ran as follows:--" Well, Crosby, are you a good boy?""Yes, very." "What do you learn?"--"Every thing." "You must have a prodigious memory." Yes, I have." "Who gave it you?"—" Mr. Fine Eagle!" "Fine Eagle, indeed, the very Bird of Paradise." "Mamma says, as I shall be eight next August, it would be a great shame if I did not know all about every thing."-" Certainly, what else are the Rules for Memory' good for? Let me examine you: When did Cicero flourish ?"-"In the great plague of 1666." "Who married Queen Anne ?"--" The Black Prince." "Who strung Cleopatra's necklace ?"-"The venerable Bede." "Who gained the Battle of Blenheim ?"- -"John Bunyan." "Who was the first Bishop of London?"-" Titus Oates." "Who invented gunpowder?"--" Bishop Blaise." "What's Latin for a carpet?"-" Homo." "There's a good boy, so it is!" The sound of "Dinner is ready" here caused my catechism to halt.

When one is asked to meet piquant company there is much hope and fear excited with regard to whom one is placed next to at table. One fidgets, and frisks, and manoeuvres, after a pleasant partner: and, after all, 'tis ten to one that one gets planted with one's Aunt on one side, and a pale girl just out on the other. No such excited feelings arose in my bosom in Gower-street. I walked into the dining-room as philosophically as if I were entering St. Stephen's, Walbrook, on a wet Sunday afternoon. The dinner was in admirable keeping with the party. There was gravy soup at the bottom of the table, and at top a juvenile salmon with his tail in his mouth, like the snake grasped in the right hand of the grandfather of gods and men. On the removal of these preliminaries, the salmon was succeeded by a tongue supported by boiled fowls, and the soup by an edgebone of beef. Let no man turn up his nose at an edgebone of beef: it is by no means a bad thing: certain, however, it is, that when I beheld my plate laden with two slices of that article, interspersed with greens and carrots, not to mention a dab of mustard on the margin, the delf assumed as every-day an aspect as heart could wish. I fancied myself, for the moment, seated in the cook's-shop at the corner of St. Martin's-court, where a round of beef is carved by a round of woman. On my left, sat the fat middle-aged woman in pink crape, whom I had originally found seated on the sofa. I could not catch her name, but from circumstances I was led to believe that she had been to the French play

VOL. X. NO. XLII.

2 N

in Tottenham-street, inasmuch as she observed that Laporte reminded her of Harley. Amelia Cookson, who sat on my right hand, asked me if I had seen the Diorama; and told me, that she preferred it, upon the whole, to Mr. Irving. Amelia and I got rather intimate during dinner. There occurred two pauses from lack of conversation. This induced her to tell me in confidence, that her family were generally reckoned dull : her brother Charles, indeed, was less so than the rest: he once sent a letter to the British Press, signed " Truth," which was inserted; but still, upon the whole, he was dull. However, added she, we are reckoned very amiable. I now drank a glass of sherry with the young man in blue from Basingstoke, who informed me, that sherry was become a very fashionable wine. Mr. Oliphant said it was the best wine for gouty men, which confirmed me in my original suspicion of his being afflicted with that complaint. Mr. Cookson asked me if I had seen Zoroaster or the Exhibition; and Mrs. Cookson hoped I did not find the fire troublesome. Sir John Dawson, recently from Paris, said there was not a house in London fit to be seen. modestly suggested Devonshire-house; but Lady Dawson assured me, that it would not be endured in the Rue St. Honoré. Amelia Cookson talked to me of her Scrap Book. It was enriched, she told me, with several manuscript pieces of rare value. Yesterday a friend in Devonshire sent her something beginning with "O Solitude, romantic Maid;" then there was "O'er the vine-covered hills and gay valleys of France," which had never been published. I told her that I could let her have something of my own. Amelia expressed her gratitude, and promised in return to write me out "Gray's Elegy written in a Country Church-yard," and something else very pretty, beginning "Pity the sorrows of a poor old Man." I have since kept my word by sending her "Hope, thou nurse of young Desire," and "As near Porto Bello lying." The poor girl received them with tears of gratitude. I believe I have stated every thing of moment that took place during dinner. On the summons to tea I rejoined the ladies with a benignant bow, which was meant to express a hope that they had not been very wretched during my unavoidable absence. Mrs. Oliphant supposed that we had been talking politics. There were two manuscript books lying upon the drawing-room table, viz. Amelia's Scrap Book and Lucy's Collection of Autographs. The latter had lately enriched her collection by Colonel Scrape's tailor's bill; a notice from a vestry clerk to attend a parish meeting; an original letter from a school-boy at Mortlake, hoping that his father would send John to meet him at the White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, on the Wednesday following, precisely at four; and a frank given by Alderman Wood. Upon casting my eye over the collection, I found that I too had my share of graphic immortality. A letter of mine had been sedulously preserved, in which I had confidentially expressed my opinion about Jack Average's acceptances; and had ventured to surmise that Sir Hyacinth O'Rourke only went to Cheltenham to pick up an heiress. The shewing about of this epistle has since involved me in a duel, and an action for defamation: but we great folks must pay a tax for our eminence.

Tea being dispatched, it was intimated to me that I could sing "Madamina" in Don Giovanni, and Mrs. Cookson assured me that her daughter Lucy should accompany me. I assured Mrs. Cookson that I had no voice; and Mrs. Cookson assured me that I was an excellent singer. These two lies being uttered, Lucy pulled off her gloves to

prepare for action; and Lady Dawson, recently from Paris, took that opportunity to inform me that Signor Rossini charged eighty guineas a night for attending concerts. I was startled at the magnitude of the sum, and hinted that if he were relieved of part of his burthen by the cooperation of marrow-bones and cleavers, and a comb and a piece of paper, he might possibly be induced to come for sixty. But no: I was assured by Lady Dawson, recently from Paris, that he would not fiddle to his own father for a farthing less. I now started “Madamina” to Miss Lucy Cookson's accompaniment. As the lady played in all sorts of time, I determined at last to sing to my own, so that by the period of my arrival at the slow movement, commencing "Nella bionda," my divine Saint Cecilia had arrived at "Voi sapete." We all agreed it was capital; and that the great beauty of Mozart's music was the accompaniment. Lucy Cookson now rose from her music-stool to reach "Nel cor non più mi sento," with variations by Mazzinghi. Upon these occasions every-day mothers make it a rule to play puss in a corner. Mrs. Oliphant seized her opportunity, pounced upon the circular red-morocco, and placed her daughter on the momentarily vacant seat. There was not a moment to be lost. Away she started with Rousseau's Dream, with variations by Cramer; and the Saxon air, with variations by ditto. "Now, my dear," said the mother, "sing' We're a' noddin;' and now sing Charley is my darling' and when you've got through Home, sweet home,' and Oh, softly sleep,' I'm sure the company will be delighted to hear 'Betty, Betty Bell,"" (meaning, I presume, "Batti, batti, o bel.") The young lady was too dutiful to disobey, and we too civil to object. Lucy Cookson, who had been "pushed from her stool," bade me observe, that all the allegro movements were played in slow time; that the hands of the fair usurper were glued to the keys during every rest: and the Staccato was actually played Legato. I expressed a suitable horror at this; and assisted little Crosby (who ought to have been in his bed three hours before) in raising the lid of the piano, to give effect to "My pretty page," which was thundered forth like Beethoven's Battle Sinfonia. Crosby urged me to stand closer, to eye the movements of the little red men under the wires; but I doubted the stability of the slim mahogany prop that supported the cover of the instrument, and did not wish to have what little nose I possess knocked out of my head.

Upon a review of all that took place at Mr. Cookson's dinner in Gower-street, it seems to me that " more common matters" were never discussed in the Court of Exchequer right glad am I that it is so, and I hope soon to dine there again. Nothing is so fatiguing as keeping one's faculties on the constant stretch. When I dine with Sir Peter Pallet, I am previously obliged to dive into Reynolds's Discourses, to qualify myself to talk about "the Art," the fact being that I don't know a Raphael from a red-herring. Jack Georgic puts my Latin to the proof; and at the Beef-steak Club I am momentarily obliged to belabour my imagination, in order to create a repartee that shall set the table in a roar, and blow my adversary to atoms. No violence like this takes place at the tables of every-day people. There my memory puts on its night-gown, and my judgment and imagination their red-morocco slippers. Let my Aunt Edwards take it as she likes, I will not sit down without proposing the following toast-"Health and prosperity to Every-day People!"

*

THE INDIAN WOMAN TO DIOGO ALVAREZ,*

On his departure from Bahia.

WHEN thou stood'st amidst thy countrymen

Our captive and our foe,

What voice of pity was it then

That check'd the fatal blow?

When the name of the mighty "Man of Fire"

Re-echoed to the sky,

And our chiefs forgot their deadly ire,—

Who hail'd thy victory?

What voice, like the softest sweetest note,

That rings from the slender white-bird's † throat,

Hath soothed thee oft to rest?

And thou hast said—so tenderly !

That to sit among willow isles with me
Was to be ever blest.

Oh! have we not wander'd in silent night,

When the thick dews fell from the weeping bough ; †

And then these eyes as the stars were bright,

But are wet like those mournful branches now!

Like the leafless plant § that twines around
The forest tree so fair and high,

And when in that withering clasp 'tis bound
Leaves the blighted trunk to die;

Thy vows round my trusting heart have wound,
And now thou leav'st me to misery!

Thou wilt not return-thy words are vain!
Thou wilt cross the deep blue sea,

And some dark-eye'd maid of thy native Spain
Will lure thee far from me.

The summer will come, and our willow shore
Will hear the Merman || sing;

But thou wilt list to his song no more,
When the rocks with his music ring:

He will murmur thy falsehood to every cave,
Or will tell of thy death on the stormy wave !—

The first settler in Bahia was Diogo Alvarez, a native of Viana, young and of noble family. He was wrecked on the shoals N. of the bar of Bahia, and escaped the cruel death met by the other survivors of the crew from the Indians, by exerting himself to recover things from the wreck, and thus conciliating the favour of the natives. Among the rest some barrels of powder and a musket enabled him to astonish them by firing at a bird, which he brought down before them: he thus acquired the name of Caramuru-a man of fire. From a slave he became a sovereign, and the chiefs of the savages thought themselves happy if he would accept their daughters in marriage. At length a French vessel came within the bay, and Diogo embarked in it to revisit his native country. One of his wives, in despair at his departure, swam after the ship, and her strength failing her she sunk. He returned again to Brazil.-See Southey's History of Brazil.

There is a little white bird called the Ringer, because its note resembles the sound of a bell.

From the tree called Escapu there falls a copious dew, like a shower, at certain hours.

§ The leafless parasite plants destroy the trees round which they twine.

The natives call the Mer-men, or sea-apes, Upupiara: they go up the rivers in summer.-Ibid.